‘Hardest man in football’ had illegal bare knuckle fights and once played with his nose stapled to his cheek

FOOTBALL hard man Billy Whitehurst played after bar-room brawls and illegal bare-knuckle fights in a remarkable career.

The former Hull and Newcastle striker, 64, scored 99 goals in 454 appearances across a professional career that spanned from 1977 to 1993.

PA:Press AssociationBilly Whitehurst spent two seasons at Newcastle from 1985 to 1987[/caption]

Whitehurst also spent two years with Oxford UnitedGetty

But the Yorkshire-born forward was better known for being one of the toughest men in English football.

And fellow tough-tackler Vinnie Jones once dubbed Whitehurst the “hardest man in football” during a speaking tour.

Whitehurst’s ex-Sheffield United team-mate Jamie Hoyland also told a story about how the striker stood up to the feared former Liverpool and Southampton man Neil “Razor” Ruddock – even though he did not feature in the game.

Hoyland said: “We’re playing Southampton at home.

“Razor Ruddock’s absolutely battering Brian Deane all over the place; bullying him smashing him and things like that.

“Harry just looks around and says ‘Go and get Billy – he’s up in the stands.”

And Ruddock recalled: “He was from Doncaster. Big, big man. Scary.

“I was whacking Brian Deane, getting the better of him in one match, and Billy Whitehurst wasn’t playing.

CASINO SPECIAL – BEST CASINO WELCOME OFFERS

Tough-tackler Vinnie Jones labelled Whitehurst the ‘hardest man in football’News Group Newspapers Ltd

Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock also admitted he was ‘scared’ of WhitehurstGetty

“So, the half-time whistle goes, and Billy runs on the pitch with his suit and tie on, and he gets my Southampton shirt and just rips it, so it looks like I’ve got a cardigan on now with no buttons.

“We only had one shirt. So, second half, I had to put the shirt on like that and pull my shorts up like Simon Cowell wears his strides.”

He went on to add: “He used to scare the life out of me.

“You’d win a header against Billy Whitehurst and he’d want to tear your head off just for beating him in the air.

“He was a dangerous man. Everyone was scared of him.”

Podcast host Matt Legg also discussed the bare-knuckle fights that Whitehurst got involved in.

And they resulted in him coming away with some bad injuries, leading to him having to lie to his manager.

Legg said: “Billy was offered two illegal bare knuckle fights for £1,000.

“The first fight was relatively easy with Billy getting a quick knockout, but the second one was a lot tougher with Billy suffering a lot of facial damage. He said he got quite a mauling in that fight.

“He told the Oxford manager Morris Evans that he’d been involved in a car crash and he still played the following match with his face stitched up.”

He also became embroiled in bar brawls that left him looking like “Frankenstein”.

And one time in particular, while playing for Nottingham Forest, he stunned team-mates by ripping out stitches at half-time and stapling his nose to a gash in his cheek sustained from a fight.

Legg continued: “Another fight in a bar whilst at Oxford left Billy looking like Frankenstein’s monster.

“Billy said of the fight ‘I put my thumb in his eye and smashed his head against the wall then his friend pulled out one of those extendable telescopic coshes and hit me straight across the nose’.

“Billy needed numerous stitches to close up the big cut that was in his face from the fight.

“While playing in a match soon after, he collided with the keeper, opened up the cut and ripped some stitches.

“During half-time he ripped all of the stitches out and, to the horror of the Nottingham Forest team.

“Whitehurst came back out to play the second half with his nose stapled to the hole in his cheek.”

However, one myth about Whitehurst was denied by the man himself after Paul Gascoigne accused him of breaking his jaw in his autobiography.

Whitehurst said:  “I didn’t break his jaw. He put in his book that I nutmegged him in training and I said ‘if you do that again I’ll break your jaw,’ but I didn’t break his jaw.

“He never had his jaw broken while I was there.”

More than three decades on from the end of his pro career, Whitehurst has dabbled in a host of new careers.

They include training greyhounds, running pubs, and doing some building work.

Whitehurst earned his reputation thanks to a number of hard man storiesGetty